Electric Drive Technology

Developing and testing electronic control units

Application Areas of Electric MotorsIn automotive applications, electric drives are being incorporated into several complex, basic, and safety-relevant vehicle functions. Some examples of automotive applications are

Electric steering systems

Powertrain actuators

Starter-generator systems

Electric vehicles

Mild/full-hybrid systems

Electric brake systems

Electric window lifters

Auxiliary aggregates: oil pumps, water pumps, etc.

Electric motors are also in widespread use in the capital goods industry, medical technology, and aerospace sector. Aerospace applications especially have high requirements regarding safety and reliability.

Other applications include:

Wind energy converters

Electric trains

Printing machines

Roller mills for cold and warm roll forming

Zinc coating plant (headway and drive control)

Artificial respirators

Magnetic resonance tomography

A bipedal walking robot

Developing with Rapid Control Prototyping

Advantages of Rapid Control PrototypingTo develop a new control strategy, you have to evaluate different approaches and functions. You need to concentrate completely on your function development and should not have to worry about the performance of the prototyping hardware. Ideally, you can optimize your function designs both on the test bench and in the actual vehicle or industrial drive system, until they meet the requirements – all without having to do any programming.

Testing with Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation

Advantages of HIL SimulationAfter the ECU functions have been developed and implemented on the production ECU, they have to be tested thoroughly. With hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation, you can easily cover all the different motor varieties and their ECUs.The ECU’s environment (interacting components or even a whole system), is simulated. This has several advantages:

Function tests are possible at an early development stage, even before all parts are available in reality.

Laboratory tests reduce time and cost and take place under controlled conditions.

Failures, and the ECU’s behavior in what are normally dangerous situations, can be tested with no risk for the driver or the controlled machine.